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Title: The Grandfather Paradox by Steven Burgauer ISBN: 1-892086-01-8 Publisher: Zero-g Press Pub. Date: 30 April, 1998 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 2.67 (3 reviews)
Rating: 1
Summary: It needs an editor!
Comment: I like sci-fi, and I love time travel stories, but ...
With all the flaws tmm2112 noted, I can't believe he still gave 4 stars! I won't reiterate - check tmm's review! I will add that the digressions tmm cited were provided at the expense of key scenes of the story! He expounded on the theory of time travel, then skipped the whole experience!
Worst of all for me was the hideous overuse of the exclamation point! It was painful at first - now I'm afraid I am inured and that it will take several (edited) books before I will again notice the difference between a statement and an exclamatory!
And was that an ending, or was the author interrupted before completing this tale?!
Rating: 4
Summary: A fun read.
Comment: A fun read
by tmm2112 Jul 28 '02 (Updated Jul 29 '02)
Pros: A fun time/space travel romp with dashes of American history thrown in
Cons: Too wordy in places, too little info in others
The Bottom Line: If you like light-hearted SF space travel and time travel stories, read it.
Recommended: Yes
This was my first time to read a book by Steven Burgauer, and it was not a disappointment. Long a fan of science fiction and historical fiction, I found this book to satisfy both desires. Steven clearly has a good grasp of space travel and time travel theories and puts them to good use as his protagonists traverse the galaxy and the time stream to reach their goals.
This is not a cyberpunk novel. You'll find no computer controlled society of people with cybernetic implants. No Matrix and no Terminators. It's more reminiscent of SF from the 60's and 70's, light-hearted with adventure and fun at its core.
The protagonist is Andu, a former Afghan freedom fighter and spaceship propulsion inventor who has a dark family secret; there's a defect in his DNA that has befuddled even modern (25th century) medical science. So his only hope is to travel back in time and retrieve a donor in his family line who does not have the defect. Would you believe he has to travel all the way back to the American Civil War? But wait a minute, even in the 25th century, time travel is only a theory. No one's ever actually done it. But the theory was developed by a rebellious religious faction who migrated away from earth long ago. Who were they? Why, the Mormons, of course. Only, they got lost in space and have never been heard from since, and the secret to time travel was lost with them.
The title is slightly misleading, if you are familiar with the term "the grandfather paradox" as it relates to time travel. It implies that the paradox plays a significant role in the story and it does not. It does not detract from this rousing tale, but I would have recommended a title emphasizing the role of the missing gene or the Tachyon Drive.
Andu is a survivor and encounters obstacles from crew members, aliens, nature and his own heart to complete his mission. We don't meet his main companion until almost halfway through the book, but once we do the chemistry is fantastic. The book strikes a nice balance between characterization and action. The surreal nature of the adventure itself and some of the creatures Andu encounters along the way give the book a feel not unlike the work of Piers Anthony in some of his older SF work (Macroscope, Cthon and Orn). But the detailed discussions of time travel theory and gravity wells (complete with graphs) better resemble the hard science fiction of Isaac Asimov. The juxtaposition of the two styles is curiously entertaining which gave me the feel of wild adventure and a physics lesson in the same book.
One of the two faults the novel has is the extraneous exposition Steven divulges at times. The appearance of a young Sam Clemens is charming, that is until he's told you one too many of his tall tales and expounded on the human condition a little too often. And their ultimate clash with the American Civil War was tastefully handled except for the vast amount of detail Steven indulges in. Most of this exposition was at a birds eye view to the reader and did not directly affect the protagonist. Though it was clear that Steven knows a little about the Civil War, perhaps a better place to demonstrate it would be in a true historical fiction tale based in that era. And I would be glad to give it a try.
Some plot details were strangely missing or glossed over with the wave of a hand. The characters get from point A to point B with the simple turning of a page. These missing plot steps would have been more interesting to read than the many pages of war maneuvers by Union and Rebel troops that I did read. I also found the ending to be particularly abrupt and unsatisfying. There should have been numerous questions raised by their sudden appearance
Overall I enjoyed the book and will probably read another work of his. It was a good SF romp through time and space in the tradition of Isaac Asimov and Piers Anthony.
Mark
Columbus, MS
Rating: 3
Summary: Could have been a great book
Comment: It could have been, if it had an editor to hold the author's feet to the fire. The problem with self-published books like this one, there isn't anyone to tell the author to take this out or expand on the other bit. This could have been a great book, if someone had done so.
A time travel story in which the hero discovers the method to returning to the past, and does so in order to save his grandmother from a fatal genetic disorder. So far, so good.
Burgauer is an excellent writer, his dialog is crisp, his charecters are reasonably believable. But then, despite the superb writing, the whole book is dragged down by its flaws.
The story repeatedly screeches to a halt while Burgauer uses page after page to go off on a tangent, usally in the form of an essay plugged into the body of the story. First, when the hero finds the time travel technique, we have 12 pages of exposition, including charts, on how to do it. Just as dull as it sounds. Six pages about the science of poker, which didn't contribute anything to the story. It was followed by a couple of pages that basically just said "Using her telepathy, the women from the future made a killing in poker". Later, after the hero gets involved in the American Civil War, 18 pages about the Battle of Shiloh, including maps, with nary a mention of our fictional charecters. Now, I'm even a bit of a Civil War buff, but if I wanted this, I'd just go read Shelby Foote. No matter how well paced a book is otherwise, digressions like these just stop the narrative flow dead.
Other flaws. The depiction of Samuel Clemens, an important part of the last part of the book. The majority of Clemens' dialog seems to have been cut-and-pasted from his "Life on the Mississippi" and "Roughing It". Burgauer demonstrated in the rest of the book he could write good dialog, I do think he could have put something more original in the voice of Mark Twain for the story. A faintly ridiculous sex scene, basically beautiful female triplets who have never seen a male before our hero... Future villians drawn as the kind of bigoted buffoons you expect to find in the KKK.
If only a good editor had gotten ahold of this book, slashed the chaff away without mercy, browbeat Burgauer into expanding on the interplay between the two main charecters and everyone else, and maybe made the future bad guys a little less two dimensional. This book might have been a contender for an award.
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Title: Past Imperfect by Martin Harry Greenberg, Larry Segriff ISBN: 0756400120 Publisher: DAW Books Pub. Date: 10 October, 2001 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
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Title: A Shortcut in Time by Charles Dickinson ISBN: 0765305798 Publisher: Forge Pub. Date: January, 2003 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: The Man Who Folded Himself by David Gerrold, Geoffrey Klempner ISBN: 1932100040 Publisher: BenBella Books Pub. Date: 01 July, 2003 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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Title: Time Machines: The Best Time Travel Stories Ever Written by Bill Adler ISBN: 0786710330 Publisher: Carroll & Graf Pub. Date: August, 2002 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: Time Stand Still: A Darren Camponi Novel by John Misak ISBN: 1931402183 Publisher: Barclay Books, LLC Pub. Date: 01 August, 2002 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
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